"I went through a crazy shark attack (biggest shark I’ve ever seen) which was a very crazy scene and scared the living f*ck out of me."

Some of us are born to walk through storms and Kai Mckenzie, the surfer who lost his leg in a Great White attack six weeks back, has emerged from the haze of surgeries and shock of losing a stilt in seemingly brilliant form.

The twenty-three-year-old Rage teamrider was surfing a breakwall in Port Macquarie when the shark hit.
Kai made it shore where an off-duty cop used his dog’s leash as a tourniquet, saving the kid’s life. His leg washed up a short time later. All of it captured on film. 

“Breaking his back last year, he never once complained … [he] always just got on with doing what he loved as soon as possible,” Rage wrote on Instagram. “He is an inspiring person.”

In a missive posted from his bed in Newcastle’s John Hunter hospital, Kai wrote;

Man ohh fucking man to be here right now just to fucking be able to hold my beautiful Eve and my family is everything to me, a few days ago I went through a crazy shark attack ( biggest shark I’ve ever seen ) which was a very crazy scene and scared the living fuck out of me, but to all you fucking kind hearted people, all you legends, to anyone and everyone all your support has meant the absolute world to me… I can tell you now if you know my personality this means fuck all. I’ll be back in that water In no time ! BIG FUCK OFF TO THAT SHARK and BIG THANKS to Steve for saving my life.

Kai hasn’t been fucking around in hospital either, releasing a video “Pay to Play” in which he stars in and edited over the past few weeks.

“The clip isn’t everything I wanted after what happened but it is what it is and this is it,” says Kai.

More essential than most.

Come see Harry Bryant's full array of tricks, from cold fortitude to sensual gaiety!

If you didn’t know, Harry Bryant is an almost thirty-year-old Australian with juvenile dimples and an albino choir boy’s haircut.

He is, also, an interesting combination of sartorial elegance and the smell of fish.

When he talks he is so gentle and faraway he often gives the impression of being half asleep.

Together with his filmer guy-pal Dave Fox, Harry Bryant has enjoyed a deserved reputation as a man who can take a surf movie theme, say Motel Hell, and carry it to dazzling fruition.

In the pair’s latest short, Mucho Gringo, Harry Bryant shows all his usual ocean-spray zest for living on the wind as he chokes on a series of long lefthand points in, you might imagine, that land of the long, cold lefthander, Chile.

The surfing of Harry Bryant comprises many elements of contrasting excitement, from cold fortitude to sensual gaiety to unquenchable survivable power in the difficult waves.

Essential.

"Every paddle out, every wipeout and every glorious ride."

It was ironic, last January, when the “best day in surfing history,” as big-wave world champ Billy Kemper described it, had nothing to do with the WSL, surf brands or even, as the winner was announced on the beach by Clyde Aikau, a professional surfer.

In building twenty-to-thirty-foot surf, Luke Shepardson, twenty-seven, who started the morning by clocking in to his gig as a North Shore lifeguard, took a few hours off work and by day’s end had beaten the most stacked field in the event’s history.

Apart from defending champ John John Florence, who finished second, Shepardson outsurfed big-wave world champs Makua Rothman and Billy Kemper, both surprise competitors after suffering injuries at the Backdoor Shootout, Kai Lenny, Zeke Lau, Grant Baker, Ross Clarke-Jones and so on.

In Nathan Florence’s telling of the event, middle bro does what he does best: a quick intro, in this case walking along the Kam Highway in the pre-dawn darkness, then has his filmers capture every moment from a truly epic day, and, in the edit, the action is allowed to breathe, so to speak.

Watch on a big screen, sound up so you can hear the thunder of the ocean and the gasps of the crowd as closeout sets hammer the best surfers in the world and the jet-ski teams roar shoreward.

Yeah, it’s old but, also, ageless.